Single-wafer rapid thermal processing (RTP) has become an important fabrication technology for various applications such as thermal oxidation and nitridation, epitaxial growth, junction annealing, silicide formation/anneal, CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) well formation, rapid thermal chemical-vapor deposition (RTCVC), and others. Major efforts have been made on full-flow single-wafer integrated processing such as in semiconductor minifactory and conventional factory environments. One important requirement in RTP is repeatable and accurate temperature measurement and control for uniform and repeatable RTP-based fabrication processes. To eliminate the wafer pattern and process-related effects on temperature measurement and controls, one approach has been to perform multi-point wafer temperature measurement via light pipes inserted into RTP illuminators and probing the wafer backside. Therefore, the condition of the wafer backside and any change in the backside characteristics during RTP can have strong effects on wafer temperature measurement accuracy and repeatability. Moreover, uniformity of the wafer backside emissivity and surface conditions usually have a strong impact on the pyrometry temperature measurement and therefore a strong impact on the RTP uniformity and wafer-to-wafer process repeatability. In an integrated semiconductor device fabrication flow, multiple RTP fabrication steps may be used. The conventional process integration technique, result in numerous changes in the wafer backside structure and emissivity due to deposition, growth, and etch processes. As a result, there is a need for proper pre-conditioning of the semiconductor wafer backsides to ensure repeatable and uniform backside emissivity with negligible variations and drifts during the integrated process steps. Wafers having a single silicon dioxide layer on the wafer backside can be purchased from commercial vendors. However, the single oxide layer only serves to prevent dopant outdiffusion (and therefore process and wafer cross-contamination) and does not address the other foregoing described needs of to produce uniform backside emissivity and surface conditions for RTP-based integrated processing.